


breaking down

by the_jennster



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: (Written from experience), (if you get that reference i love you), Abusive Parents, Angst, Character Study, Henry "Monty" Montague is a Mess, Henry Montague Sr.'s A+ Parenting, I mean you can imagine there is, M/M, Musings about hopeless crushes turned "wow i'm a fucked up human being huh", No Happy Endings In Sight For Us, One-Sided Attraction, The Complete & Utter Clusterfuck of Being In Love With One's Best Friend, about how his hopeless crush on Percy, and feelings that he doesn't deserve to be happy, because it is, but this is literally just Monty monologuing for 1k, extended vase metaphors, is a direct biproduct of his father's abuse, no implications of percy liking monty back, pure angst, sorry not sorry yall, this is just
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_jennster/pseuds/the_jennster
Summary: Monty can see himself, five, ten, twenty years down the line, watching Percy get happily married to some bloke, and even though his heart still lies with him, even though there is no part of him that does not one hundred percent belong to Percy fucking Newton, be happy.In which Monty realizes that his own happiness has never really mattered.
Relationships: Henry "Monty" Montague/Percy Newton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	breaking down

**Author's Note:**

> You know what happens when you have a very damning combination of Monty on the brain and constantly yearning for your best friend? Projection hours, folks. Yes I entirely listened to Florence while writing this, yes this is named after a Florence song, but this one isn't happy like the last one, you've been warned.

There is something terribly fucked up with him, Monty decides.

There must be something broken in his brain, in his heart. Maybe he took one too many beatings, maybe it was the poisoned words thrown at him since he was first capable of disappointment, but something in him is hard-wired for a love he can’t have.

He knows this, he knows this better than he knows his own self, he knows that what he _wants_ is something he can never have, because _it simply won’t happen_.

But still, he wants it.

And the worst part is, he’s _fine_ with that.

Which is where the broken part lies.

Because he must be broken, truly. To love his best friend in a way that is so far beyond what Percy feels for him in return, to _know_ that Percy doesn’t love him in that way (to have been told that with every joke about being his brother, every offhand remark about trust and respect and “I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about you trying to get in my pants”), and to not only keep loving him but to be totally satisfied with this fate.

Honestly, what kind of person is wholly fine with that? Who loves someone and knows they can’t have them—it would never work, Percy has complained time and time again about Monty’s drinking habits, his dating habits, his _everything_ habits, they’d bicker themselves to death if they were together in that way—and finds no issue in the matter?

Monty can see himself, five, ten, twenty years down the line, watching Percy get happily married to some bloke, and even though his heart still lies with him, even though there is no part of him that does not one hundred percent belong to Percy fucking Newton, be happy.

Because it doesn’t really matter in the end, if he gets what he wants. He doesn’t deserve what he wants, in all fucking honesty. He’s a right bastard and he’s hurt people—he drinks to forget his father and becomes more and more of him in the process, he remembers the first time his fist hit a wall in a pub and all of a sudden every ounce of anger in his bones leeched out and was replaced with pure unadultered _fear_ in this inevitable becoming of the very thing he hates—and he doesn’t deserve that happy ending that dances across his mind in the quiet nights.

He and Percy, hands and chests pressed together, dancing barefoot in a kitchen indisputably their own, lovesick smiles on their faces, a song that means more than the words playing, a future that feels so singularly safe and loved in a way he’s never known, not truly.

He doesn’t deserve that.

He knows it.

And Percy does too. He sees it in every pitying glance, the same one he gets at every offhand mention of his father, of the seen and unseen marks left upon him from eighteen years of “Worthless piece of shit” thrown at him.

As much as Percy says he believes in him, they both know it’s not true.

But it’s another lie that Monty tells himself to get through the day, right along with “You’ll be fine” and “You’re not becoming him.”

It’s as undeniable as the scar where his ear would be and the blood on his father’s office floor, a simple fact.

He’s broken—whether by nature or nurture, there’s no way of telling. Would he be this way, so satisfied to watch his world fade, if he hadn’t been denied a chance to find the world at all? Or is this a fact of who he is, in every timeline, in every reality, every version of him contended to pine away hopelessly for the boy he knows he doesn’t deserve?

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t _want_ to know, frankly, because knowing means finding out that he’s either damned to be this broken failure no matter who his father was or that if his father was a better man (a man at all, because what _man_ beats his child, what _man--_ ) he might be whole.

It’s a lot, to be so viscerally aware of one’s brokenness. To feel the ragged edges of oneself, to feel their cut with every movement, to feel the blood pool at their fingertips and know that _you did that_.

Sometimes he imagines himself a vase, carefully placed on an end table in his father’s office. Not a particularly special vase, rather plain all things considered, regardless of the flowers it’s filled with. All it took was one nudge, one wayward hip, and down he tumbles, falling with no one to catch him, hitting the floor with an inevitable impact, shattering into pieces.

And it doesn’t matter if someone tries to fix him, doesn’t matter _who_ tries to fix him, because there are always pieces lost to the folds of carpets and woodwork, pieces so small that they simply seem to vanish into thin air, and no amount of glue nor gold will change the fact that the pieces don’t fit together now. There are cracks everywhere, and one could spend years trying to repair the damage, but it will never hold water, never again be used to hold the flowers it once did, because without water, the flowers merely die.

Keeping such a vase, well, it’s quite foolish, really. Who would keep a vase that can’t hold water? One day, sooner or later, someone will find another vase, a far better one (it’s prettier, larger, holds more flowers, draws more attention) and find that the end stand is the perfect place for it—but oh, that old broken vase stands there. Well, nobody will miss it if it’s gone.

Nobody will miss him if he’s gone.

He’s broken, after all, and what use are broken things?


End file.
